Another rough outing for Halladay as Mets thump Phillies

PHILADELPHIA — Roy Halladay was not feeling very good about himself when he entered the quiet confines of the Phillies clubhouse at Citizens Bank Park Monday night.

He had made another substandard performance on the mound in a 7-2 loss to the Mets. His ERA, which was a ripe 13.50 entering the day, puffed up to 14.73 after his second start of the season last just four-plus innings.

Then he picked up his phone and saw a text from his son.

“I got a text from my son saying that I am his hero,” Halladay said, a hint of emotion detectable in his typically monotonic voice. “That means a lot. Those kinds of things mean a lot. Those are the kinds of things that do help you.”

It was a moment of peace in a time of turmoil for the aging right-hander, who is at 199 career wins, yet seems so far away from No. 200 after a spring of struggle and a regular season that has brought little comfort.

Against the Mets, Halladay lasted until the fifth inning, but didn’t get an out in the frame as the listless Phils fell to 2-5 for the season in front of 35,393 sullen fans.

The Roy Halladay 2013 Experience involves two important, open-ended questions that must be pondered while the sands drop through an hourglass.

1) How long can the Phillies wait for the veteran right-hander to get to that undefined point of “the best he can be?”

2) Would whatever “the best he can be” be good enough to remain in a big-league rotation?

These questions only can be answered by manager Charlie Manuel, pitching coach Rich Dubee and general manager Ruben Amaro Jr., and they are based on judgment and gut feelings more than any science. Halladay, too, seemed to get philosophical about the solutions to what is wrong with his pitching. In truth, his velocity has come around in recent starts.

As he spoke to reporters, he called the solution to what will bridge the gap between what is acceptable and not in his performance as “95 percent mental.”

“One of my biggest mentors, Harvey Dorfman, used to tell me,” Halladay said, “that when you’re trying to catch a bird, if you’re flailing at it and trying to grab for it, you’re never going to catch it. You have to hold out your hands and let it land.

“It’s same when you’re pitching. When you’re trying to find something, the more you’re grasping for it, reaching for it, trying to find it, the harder it is to find it ... you have to let it come to you. Especially when you want something so bad that you’d do anything to get it.”

If, in fact, there is a Roy Halladay in this day and age who can succeed in the big-league level, then the biggest hurdle for the two-time Cy Young winner is trying to solve the puzzle when the games count, with a team that at the moment isn’t making it easier by playing like garbage when the rest of the rotation is at work, as well.

“It’s tough,” he said, “because you care about the game, your teammates, the fans, the organization. You want it badly, and unfortunately when you go out there, everyone is watching. You’re not in front of five people who don’t care …”

Although his first start came against a Braves team with an explosive offense that gave him problems last season, these were the Mets, a team that last season finished 12th in the National League in runs and whose major additions to their lineup are (drumroll, please) Marlon Byrd and John Buck.

Halladay allowed all seven runs, although as has been tradition this season, the bullpen helped it along by allowing some inherited base runners to score. Once again, Chad Durbin was given the honors, as he entered with runners at first and second and no outs after Halladay exited the game and allowed both to score on a two-run single by Ruben Tejada. That would make Durbin 7-for-7 when it comes to allowing inherited runners to score – perfectly imperfect.

Before getting Durbin’s help in pushing his ERA to 14.73, Halladay walked into the darkness of the dugout, and the crowd clapped the way a golf gallery applauds when one of its members is helped away after getting hit in the cranium with an errant drive.

“He’s giving you everything he’s got,” Charlie Manuel said of Halladay. “When you see somebody who works as hard as he does … it’s kind of tough to watch. I pull for him. I want him to do good all the time.”

Halladay’s start got off to an encouraging start, as he got a pair of groundouts, then got David Wright looking at a third-strike curve after setting it up with a good cutter. However, in the second inning Byrd started things with a double stung to center field, and thing quickly unraveled for Halladay as he continued to struggle to pitch from the stretch.

After struggling to find a way to put away Lucas Duda, he plunked the left-handed lover of fastballs on the thigh with an off-speed pitch. That brought up Buck, who patiently waited for a fastball. When he got one, he powered it deep into the right-center field seats to put New York up, 3-0.

The Mets tacked on another run in the third thanks to a pair of walks and an RBI single by Duda. Then after a 1-2-3 fourth, Halladay had his first pitch of the fifth roped for a ground-rule double by Dan Murphy, followed quickly by single from Wright and Ike Davis.

Halladay threw 99 pitches. A go-to out pitch ain’t one.

The Phillies’ bats, meanwhile, were kept quiet by impressive Mets right-hander Matt Harvey, who followed his seven inning of one-hit ball in his opener by allowing just three hits and one run over seven innings to the Phils.